Most making-of films begin after the important decisions have been made. The song exists, the participants know how the story ends, and studio footage becomes evidence of a finished product. Songs From Scratch proposed a different order: choose a collaboration, document the work and release the resulting music alongside the film.
The project’s public trail begins on June 6, 2012, when reports from Hip-Hop Wired and The Source introduced a new series from music-film collective Yours Truly and adidas Originals. Its first subjects were Brooklyn MC Joey Bada$$ and producer Chuck Strangers; their finished track was “Daily Routine.”
It was an unusually revealing choice for a launch. Joey was 17 and only days away from releasing 1999, the mixtape that would establish him beyond the early audience for his “Survival Tactics” video. Chuck was not an anonymous beat supplier brought in to manufacture a crossover. He was part of Joey’s Pro Era circle, a young Brooklyn collective whose producers and rappers were developing a shared musical identity.
That familiarity gave the inaugural session a useful tension. Songs From Scratch advertised the beginning of a new record, but the artists did not have to begin their relationship from zero. The cameras could concentrate on how an existing creative language became a particular song.
One day at Dunham Studios
The surviving session details are unusually precise. According to DJBooth’s contemporary account, Yours Tru.ly and adidas invited Joey to Dunham Studios in Brooklyn on May 10, 2012. Chuck Strangers produced the resulting record. DJBooth published “Daily Routine” on June 8, while other outlets began covering the rollout on June 6 and 7, indicating that the film and track circulated across several days rather than arriving at every publication simultaneously.
DMY identified the film as the first Songs From Scratch installment and reported that Joey accepted the first beat Chuck offered. Its account also described the producer as Joey’s friend, an important detail because it distinguishes the episode from a contrived first meeting. The premise still involved making a new song within the organized session, but the speed of Joey’s response came from recognition: he already understood the producer’s rhythmic vocabulary. DMY’s report presents the composition as a notably painless process, with Joey beginning to shape his verses as soon as the beat plays.
Joey’s own explanation of his writing method helps clarify what the camera was capturing. In an Interview Magazine conversation published one day before the rollout, he said that he often entered a studio without writing materials, holding a few bars in memory, recording them and then adding more. He did not claim never to write anything down; he described a flexible process that had gradually moved toward building verses in his head.
That distinction matters. The film’s interest does not depend on pretending that creativity is magic or that every line appears fully formed. Joey’s method is incremental even when it is unwritten. A remembered phrase becomes a recorded passage, which creates the foundation for the next passage. By observing that cycle, Songs From Scratch makes composition visible without reducing it to the image of someone filling a notebook.
“Daily Routine” joins process to subject
“Daily Routine” is well suited to the experiment because it does not sound like a grand branded event. Its appeal is concentration. The Needle Drop’s June 7 notice heard a relaxed, 1990s-influenced hip-hop record with a strong hook and autobiographical details. The restrained production gives Joey space to move between memories of having little money and the new attention gathering around him.
The title works on more than one level. A daily routine is repetition, but recording a new song interrupts ordinary life. At this point Joey was balancing school with interviews, performances and studio work. Interview Magazine reported that he remained a student at Brooklyn’s Edward R. Murrow High School and that 1999 was scheduled for June 12. The session therefore caught him in a narrow transitional period: publicly recognizable enough to lead a sponsored film, but not yet the artist whose debut mixtape had been widely reviewed.
Chuck’s beat keeps that transition grounded. The track’s loop-based construction and unhurried drums belong to the sound Joey and Pro Era were refining, not to a sponsor’s attempt to force an obvious anthem. Later critical coverage of 1999 described the tape as a meeting between repurposed instrumentals by established figures and new production from Joey’s own circle. In Pitchfork’s review, Chuck explained that Joey had a specific vision for the mixtape and rejected beats that did not fit it. That account complicates the apparent ease of the filmed session: Joey could respond quickly because his aesthetic boundaries were already exacting.
“Daily Routine” subsequently became part of 1999, preserving the session inside a larger statement rather than leaving it as isolated branded content. The track appears in AllMusic’s listing for the mixtape, which credits Chuck Strangers among the project’s producers. The placement also demonstrates that the experiment generated usable repertoire. This was not merely an improvisation retained because cameras happened to be present.
The producer remains part of the story
The strongest editorial decision in the first episode is its division of attention. Conventional coverage of an emerging rapper can treat production as scenery: a beat appears, the performer supplies the visible personality, and the person who constructed the musical setting becomes a credit line. Songs From Scratch instead depends on the producer being an identifiable participant.
That focus is particularly appropriate for Pro Era. Joey told Interview Magazine that he disliked the way attention centered on him while the collective around him remained less visible. He also credited Capital STEEZ and Powers with originating Progressive Era before Joey and CJ Fly joined its formation. Placing Chuck beside him does not solve the broader imbalance of celebrity, but it does preserve one collaboration as a two-person musical exchange.
The film’s underlying sequence is simple: Chuck offers a beat, Joey locates a cadence, and the pair develop a record. Yet each stage changes the next. A rapper’s phrasing can make a producer’s loop feel newly accented; the duration of a verse can determine how a beat should open or turn; a hook can transform repetition into structure. Watching those dependencies is more informative than treating the beat as a finished platform on which the vocal is later placed.
That is also why “from scratch” should be understood as a production framework, not an absolute claim of zero preparation. The studio, participants, filming schedule and sponsor were arranged in advance. Chuck arrived with beats, and both artists brought years of listening and practice into the room. What was new was the record they selected and assembled under those conditions.
Curation, sponsorship and authorship
Yours Truly co-founder William Abramson later gave the clearest primary account of the format. In a detailed DMY interview about the organization’s work with brands, he described Songs From Scratch as a way to curate desired artist pairings, bring them together and document the creation of original songs. He said Yours Truly developed the concept before seeking a partner, while adidas supplied resources the small organization did not possess on its own.
That funding arrangement is part of the work, not a detail to conceal. Adidas Originals enabled the production and received prominent association with it. The relevant editorial question is whether the sponsorship displaced the musicians’ identities or methods. In the first session, the evidence points the other way: the finished record conforms closely to the emerging Pro Era sound and became part of Joey’s own mixtape.
The format also gave Yours Truly a role beyond observer. Selecting a pairing affects what music can exist; arranging a studio session creates the conditions for it; filming the process determines how listeners understand the result. Abramson’s account says the collective handled the series’ creation, curation and production internally, with adidas offering feedback and support. The project therefore sits between music journalism, commissioned recording and label activity.
The second installment made that structure repeatable. In July, Complex reported that Danny Brown and araabMUZIK followed Joey and Chuck, creating “Molly Ringwald.” Complex also reported plans for a limited vinyl release pairing the two songs. That physical coupling turned the first sessions into more than adjacent web videos: they became two sides of a small catalog.
An official adidas playlist now characterizes Songs From Scratch as an ongoing series of curated collaborations and includes “Daily Routine.” That later description matches the structure documented at launch. The project did not simply ask viewers to admire studio access. It made selection, negotiation and production the subject, then delivered a song that could survive outside the film.
The opening episode remains persuasive because its scale is modest. Joey Bada$$ and Chuck Strangers did not need a manufactured collision of styles. Their session demonstrates something more fundamental: familiarity can accelerate invention without making the result predetermined. “Daily Routine” emerged from an established partnership, but it did not exist until the two artists chose that beat, that cadence and that day’s version of the record. Songs From Scratch made those choices visible—and treated them as the event itself.